Yoni Shtein of Laguna Health On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry
An Interview With Luke Kervin
Don’t give up in the face of adversity — this will keep you going even when the times are hard.
The global health and wellness market is worth more than 1.5 trillion dollars. So many people are looking to improve their physical, mental, and emotional wellness. At the same time, so many people are needed to help provide these services. What does it take to create a highly successful career in the health and wellness industry?
In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry” we are talking to health and wellness professionals who can share insights and stories from their experiences.
In this particular interview, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Yoni Shtein.
Yoni Shtein is the CEO and Co-Founder of Laguna Health, a digital-first home recovery platform that reduces costly hospital readmissions and shortens recovery time. By codifying a proven clinical model into a real-time care platform coupled with a virtual care team, Laguna creates a personalized recovery plan for every individual and is proven to improve health outcomes.
After graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Yoni hit the ground running in the technology space, working for various companies/funds, including RPX, Fortress Investment Group, and Lion Investment Partners. Yoni has worked to combine his background in business with his passion for technology and wellness to serve those who need it most.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I was born in Chișinău, a city in the Eastern European country Moldova, which was recently thrust into the spotlight due to the war in Ukraine. My family and I emigrated to Israel when I was nine years old. The move forced me to learn how to become comfortable in uncomfortable situations and was influential in molding me into the person and entrepreneur that I am today.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I feel that the better question to ask is what is the most meaningful experience in my career.
I had the privilege of having an immensely meaningful military service where I spent five years in the elite commando unit in the Israeli Air Force. I was 20 years old, and I believed I was saving the universe. It was a beautiful experience having a mission and a sense of team cohesion of motivation and focus; it felt like having a superpower. When I was discharged, I was worried that I would never have a consequential life experience again.
However, working with my co-founder, Yael Peled Adam, on Laguna Health’s mission is by far the closest I‘ve ever been to that profound sense of mission from before. Also, working day and night launching Laguna Health has been the most meaningful experience in my career and one I am utterly grateful for.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Bar none, it is my wife. She is my biggest partner, enabler, support, and motivator.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I would say it’s, “Live with meaning.” Living with meaning motivates you to go very far in every aspect of your life, and provides the physical and emotional resiliency you must have in moving through challenging experiences. It also means you’re doing something that is extremely fulfilling and that you’re truly passionate about living in your purpose.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Moral compass and authenticity, relentless drive, and independent thinking.
- Have your values lead the way — this will keep you consistent and true to yourself
- Don’t give up in the face of adversity — this will keep you going even when the times are hard
- Take advice but think for yourself — this will keep you grounded in independent analysis and the reality as you perceive it vs. someone else.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?
When a patient is discharged from the hospital, there’s a common misperception that the patient is cured and okay. However, that is the furthest thing from reality in many situations. When a patient is discharged from the hospital, it is a very stressful and vulnerable moment in their life, and 50% of the discharged patients are unfortunately readmitted to the hospital.
At Laguna, we take a whole-person care approach to recovery: focusing on behavioral health, clinical care, and individual life context to help each person recover with confidence.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Laguna Health’s data-driven care engine models in real take each patient’s biological, psychological and social states in a dynamic manner and matches that against individual needs to guide individual care plans and care manager behavior. In a current medical study, Laguna Health’s technology has reduced preventable hospital readmission by 58%, and those that were readmitted incurred significantly fewer total readmission charges and less charges on average than other discharged patients that were not using Laguna Health.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
After I was discharged from the Israeli army, I became a software engineer at Microsoft and met my future co-founder, Yael. I subsequently moved to the US to pursue an MBA and work, eventually launching an investment fund based out of San Francisco. Then in 2016, I lost my mother-in-law after a hospital discharge.
Her passing was a rude awakening for my wife and me on many fronts, including a reminder of the importance of family and the realization that we do not know how long our loved ones will be here on earth. It also prompted us to ruminate on the meaning of life and do something with a deep purpose. We ended up moving back to Israel shortly thereafter.
Moving back to Israel served as a reunion with Yael, where I learned that she had experienced similar hospital discharge journeys due to giving birth multiple times and having knee surgery three times. It was during the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020 where we began to think profoundly about leveraging technology to provide services for patients and providers after surgery and hospitalization.
How do you think this might change the world?
Care transitions after hospitalization can be costly when mismanaged, pose a great challenge for healthcare providers, and are a stressful experience for patients. Currently, hospital readmissions cost billions of dollars in the US, yet roughly 50% of these readmissions are avoidable.
The myriad of factors and barriers to recovery aren’t a one-size-fits-all recovery formula for patients, which means each individual patient has a different set of needs that affects their recuperation, including individual emotional, cognitive, financial, and psychological factors.
Laguna Health has a positive impact on people’s overall quality of life — emotionally, physically, and financially. Laguna also decreases healthcare costs for providers and plans and alleviates the stress of overworked healthcare professionals.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
There are many stories about how Artificial and Augmented Intelligence and other technologies are going to take over people’s jobs. Laguna Health’s AI and technology platform is not replacing any human but rather empowers care and case managers to be more effective and efficient in their work. The technology provides real-time guidance for coaches so they can provide the best-customized care for their patients.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
Based on my experience, you only need to know one thing to create technology that can make a positive social impact successfully. You need to identify a social problem, preferably a social problem that aligns with your own principles and morals. Once you figure out the problem’s pain points, you can solve it with technology to make a social impact.
My co-founder and I spent a lot of time upfront conducting due diligence to ensure we had truly identified a pain point — in our case, post-surgery or hospitalization recovery — and that our solution — leveraging digital care and behavioral therapists to reduce readmissions — really was a value add. A true value-driven solution is the best hedge against market cycles. Once we knew our logic and ideas were sound, we could pitch investors a vision of our startup’s realistic growth with confidence. Ultimately, a true pain point won’t disappear when the hype is gone. That is not necessarily the case with fad-driven healthcare investments — those will disappear when the cycle disappears. Innovations that drive real value are built to last.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Ask yourself, “Why are you here?” You either have a fire burning inside you that makes you tick to prompt social impact, whether that be hunger, AIDS, other public health issues, etc, or you do not have that fire. You need to have a burning passion if you’re in entrepreneurship and want to create positive change because it is a very unrelenting journey for those that choose to embark on it. You will get chewed up and spit out if you do not have that relentless obsessive drive. You need an innate Northstar because you’re dedicating at least the next ten years of your life to your mission, and it will be the only way you will cherish and enjoy your years when it is challenging.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Shimon Peres. He was an elder statesman, a founding father of Israel, and became president of Israel during the last decade of his life. He had a beautiful soul where he dreamt that anything and everything is possible. He truly lived with meaning, and he set out to accomplish important things, which has been inspirational to me.
He famously said that the Jews’ greatest gift to the world is dissatisfaction.
When I look at what he said through the lens of an entrepreneur, I see the obsession an entrepreneur has as a “dissatisfaction” and it is great for the world because it’s their inner fire that is fueling them onward.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonis/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lagunahealth
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
About the Interviewer: Luke Kervin is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of PatientPop, an award-winning practice growth technology platform. PatientPop is Kervin’s third successful business venture. Prior to co-founding PatientPop, Kervin co-founded and was President of ShopNation (acquired by Meredith Corporation) and was the first executive hire at StarBrand Media (acquired by POPSUGAR).
